You Made It Happen. Carbon Neutral Got the Most Votes and Selected as a Top Priority in City Council’s Strategic Planning Session!

Despite dozens of other important items that were filtered through, we commend the City Council and Staff for making Carbon Neutrality a top priority. In the human experience, making meaningful commitments and holding each other to them can be some of the most difficult and rewarding things to do – and we just did it together.

We appreciate the support from all of you who wrote the Councilmen on this important initiative including:

Congressman Waxman, Senator Ted Lieu, Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, Environmental Advocate Dency Nelson and technical experts Craig Perkins, President & Executive Director of The Energy Coalition and Diane Moss, Founding Director of the Renewables 100 Policy Institute – and all the economic, environment and health advocates who wrote in as well.

Special thanks to those who showed up at the 8am meeting to speak and support including: Former Mayor and Councilman George Schmeltzer, Public works Commissioner Julian Katz and Environmental Advocates Craig Cadwallader and Dan Inskeep. You can see all of our very brief comments (they have to be less than 3 minutes) online at: http://hermosabeach.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=4&clip_id=2233 from minutes 1:50 – 8:00.

We are not done yet! Aggressive timelines still have to put in place. So please write the City Council (and copy the City Clerk) to thank them for their bold move and to keep the pressure on the timelines! The email addresses of the council members and the city clerk can be found here.

Feel free to copy and paste from the note below that I sent to the council:

Dear Honorable Mayor, City Council and Staff:

Thank you for your courageous vote that made Carbon Neutrality a top goal for the City ofHermosa Beach. In the human experience, making meaningful commitments and holding each other to them can be some of the most difficult and rewarding things to do – and we just did it together. We know that there are a lot of important issues that the city is facing and we appreciate your understanding of how the Carbon Neutral initiative can be a catalyst for economic growth, a more sustainable environment and healthier living.

Going forward, please institute an aggressive timeline that will allow the city to use the positioning as an economic lever that inspires action. “TheFirstCarbonNeutralCityinSouthern California” will reinvigorate efforts to find resources, grants and other monies that can stimulate our economy – and our residents. Other cities around the word with much harsher climates have made more aggressive commitments and are reaping the economic, environmental, health and community building rewards.

Respectfully,

 

Thank you again for all the support!

Tags: Case Study, Community, engineering, environmental, Life Cycle, Metrics, Net Zero Energy, solar, waste, Water, Zero Carbon

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